


Broken Promise

by wilderwisdom



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: F/F, I dont know how to tag things, One Night Stands, One Shot, Slap Slap Kiss, femmeslash, im sorry, the one that got away, wheel of time - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-06
Updated: 2015-11-06
Packaged: 2018-04-30 07:25:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5155286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wilderwisdom/pseuds/wilderwisdom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A channeller's lifespan can seem unbearably long. Nynaeve is trying so hard to find obscurity in her retirement, despite pressures from the White Tower to return to the outside world and share her wisdom with a new generation of Aes Sedai and use her political clout and familial to influence world events. The former Wisdom only wants to run her clock out in peace and quiet. She receives an unexpected visitor who breaks the monotony of self-enforced solitude. Sometimes you live long enough to find out what might have been.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Broken Promise

The tang of pine rose up with the soil she turned with the edge of her hoe. Only a few of the turnips had gone to mush with last night’s early frost, thank the Light, and with ample daylight left she would be able to relocate the lot of them into the root cellar. It was a bit earlier than she would have liked, but the Wind did not listen to her, and, Nynaeve reflected, small turnips were a good sight better than none.

  
Autumn was beginning to hunker down around the Two Rivers like a mountain cat around her cubs. The dark green hills were brushed in long strokes of yellow and amber and gold where deciduous groves interrupted the evergreens. She could smell hay curing in the sun out in the fields beyond her sight. The net of crows in the sky made her slightly nervous—she still paused to count them, after all these years, and managed to shrug away her unease when she tallied less than a dozen—but really they were large enough that they ought to be ravens, anyhow, and none of her concern. She hefted the traces of the barrow and trudged carefully to the cellar door, adding this load to the little mound by the lintel. The potatoes, hardier, were safe enough for now, and she left them alone. Soon enough, Nynaeve reflected, she would need to venture into town and see about dragging one of the lads back with her to split more logs; the pile was only up to her waist, when before winter came she would need it to reach to the eaves. Nothing to stop her gathering the deadwood out back and splitting it herself, of course. Such activity was unseemly in a woman her age, but that didn’t alter the fact that she could, with an axe, or with the Power, if it came to that. It was merely friendly. She had promised, after all.

  
A little yellow moth fluttered by, careening in the way that butterflies never did, to settle on the handle of the barrow. She watched it light on the work-polished shaft, fold its pale wings a few times, and settle down, believing itself invisible. Nynaeve ducked inside for a dipper of water, leaving the barrow undisturbed. She would not wrest the insect from its chosen landing place simply because the larger scheme of her day demanded it: she’d finished with the turnips, anyway.

  
She had snapped up this little plot of land while it was still cheap—for twice what her parents had paid, likely, when she rather thought the council should have gifted it to her. The rest of the world could go on wheeling and growing and changing without her; she had settled here, and would stay settled. The Tower could very well get along without her. She failed to see what was so imperatively beneficial about blood connection to the ruling families of five countries. At least, it was five last time she’d bothered to trace out the lineage; the alarming rate at which they interbred made it likely the bloodlines would be even more convoluted by this time. What did it matter that she had spent one woman’s lifetime as a queen, another as a queen’s advisor, before extricating herself from the mire of politics? Sometimes, Nynaeve thought a little bitterly, she probably should have retired to a less obvious location, or taken a leaf from Cadsuane and put about that she had died. As far as the world was concerned, she believed, she should be dead.

  
She had given her share and more to found this Age, Nynaeve held. Any creature, whether woman or moth, should give what they could and be permitted to settle to live—and die—how they would with dignity. She had had more than her fill of circlets and vassals and treatises and weddings and funerals. All she wanted now was immediate tasks to fill her hands and her hours—her many, many hours and days and years—until they dwindled down and she could sleep. And this self-contained farm, nestled at the foot of the Mountains of Mist, could afford her that. Though Emond’s Field—indeed, the entire Two Rivers—had sprawled out and grown even quite urbane in the last two hundred years, a quiet patch of land could still be come by, if you were willing to dig in like a badger and stand by it. And stand she did, with a small cabin built back from where her parents’ home had been torn down, a byre for a single milk cow and an old gelding, a chicken coop and a well and a vegetable patch behind the house. She asked for nothing more. Apparently, her land was technically still within the expanding village lines, but her handful of acres kept safe from development by the piece of paper kept in her writing desk. The mayor had offered her the position of Wisdom back, upon sale of the al’Meara farm, which the Women’s Circle and the Council still honored though Clerics wandered through regular enough and there was talk of building an Asha’man-run hospital halfway to Taren Ferry the last few years, as the area had become so populace. As a sort of compromise, Nynaeve had spent the first seven or so years living in this cottage with an apprentice under her roof, an honest-faced girl who couldn’t Channel a lick but had strong hands and good instincts. It had not been a hardship, keeping an apprentice, but neither was she overly saddened when the internship came to a close. She had retreated here for solitude, after all. That was precious hard to come by with a girl-child constantly underfoot, even one who was solemn for her years. She was still so incurably young. Amalie had made Nynaeve feel every one of her not inconsequential years. For a while, she had missed the fair girl’s bright laughter, but that quickly faded. It seemed that she did not feel much very strongly, anymore.

  
Nynaeve leaned against her doorway, surveying the westering sun in the tall, autumn-hollow grass and thought about dinner. She had the appetite of the old woman she was, for all she didn’t look it; though she’d had those damnable Oaths off a good thirty years, her face was only just beginning to crease around the eyes and mouth. Silver threaded through her hair, springing liberally from the temples, from all the years she’d spent and all she’d seen, but her face and body still resembled nothing so much as a woman not fifteen or twenty years older than the one who had knelt to take her Oaths in Tar Valon. She had worn them more than long enough to acquire the ageless face, and been free long enough for it to fade, though the Light only knew physical age was taking its sweet time catching up with her. She knew of no way to hurry it, though, and could only wait patiently as it ran its course.

  
The day had been warm for the season, and she decided a salad of greens would be pleasant, perhaps some tea. Nynaeve shook herself free of the wall and went out in search of dandelions.

 

 

Someone with the ability to Channel was passing through the orchard. Nynaeve thought that ought to startle her, but unfortunately she’d given up on the taxing emotion long ago. She went back to clearing the trellis of peas, dropping the pods into her gathered apron, and waited. She hoped it was not another delegate of the Greys’ trying once more to drag her out of retirement. The last woman they sent—was it seven years ago? Or eight?—had stayed a full two weeks, eaten more than her share, and left disappointed. They were becoming ever more inventive, but Nynaeve had no intention of acquiescing to their pleas, however strident. She had been freed of the Oaths, and was under no obligations, imagined or otherwise. If they thought to out-stubborn a Two Rivers woman, they would learn different.  
The figure strolled up the dusty path to the garden. Nynaeve watched with passive curiosity, one metaphorical hand extended to dip into saidar; the other woman could indeed Channel, but to such an extent that most would never consider her a threat. She would not make that mistake. She had done much in her lifetime against the unfounded caste system held by Aes Sedai; with exposure to other cultures’ management of Channeling, their rank-by-strength system was becoming visibly obsolete, but so many would never be convinced to see things a different way than how they already saw them.

  
The trespasser was dressed all in pale shades of blue. Nynaeve kept her head resolutely down, refusing to play into their game, whatever it happened to be this time. She plucked beans from the vine and hoped her back wasn’t too stiff.

  
Moiraine Damodred stood with a hand on the garden gate, silently waiting as if for permission to enter. Nynaeve regarded the woman, unsure at that moment what else to do, a mix of not entirely pleasant emotions trying to make themselves heard and succeeding only in making such a clamor that none could be distinguished. Her clothing was simpler than it might have once been, but she held herself with an elegance that more than made up for any lack. A blue stone rested upon an unlined brow—her face unchanged from the day Nynaeve first saw it. Except the eyes; the large, dark eyes were somehow ineffably deeper, if that were possible, a testimony to all she’d seen and endured in her lifetime. Nynaeve got a good chance to study those enigmatic eyes; Moiraine’s own gaze hitched on the white thumbprint between Nynaeve’s own.

  
“Well.” Nynaeve said flatly, after an achingly long moment. “As long as you’re here, make yourself useful.” Nodding at a small wicker basket, she instructed, “Check those low bushes for any strawberries the deer might’ve missed.”

 

* * *

 

The hearth fire burned low, suffusing the one-room dwelling with a dim warmth, aided by a single candle on the tabletop. Sweet herbs diffused with the melting tallow. Not a word broke the silence, and it was by no means an easy one. The noise of wooden dishes and the low fire served as the only surrender.

  
Nynaeve was uncertain how to read the slight pulling up in the corner of the older woman’s mouth. Moiraine’s gaze stretched out into the middle distance, past the crackling embers; she seemed not to behold her surroundings at all.

  
“I always promised myself I would never come back here,” she murmured at last, as if to herself, but her voice bespoke more of wistfulness than it did of regret.

  
“Why?” Nynaeve felt her breath desert her as those unfathomable eyes swung about, as if just now noticing her, pinioned her as surely as a snare.

  
The Blue forbore to answer. Instead, she sipped at the elderberry wine in its wooden tumbler and observed the other woman for a time.  
“What are you doing here, Nynaeve?” she said at last, the words unexpectedly clipped.

  
“Doing?” Nynaeve countered the demand. “Doing what?”

  
“They want you back, you know.” The Blue changed the subject. “Want it badly.”

  
“Badly enough to send you.” Nynaeve snorted and stood abruptly, clearing dishes from the table to put distance between herself and Moiraine.

  
“That is the reason they put marks in my pocket and pointed me this way.” she inclined her head in acknowledgement. “But I promise, I did not come here to preach at you.”

  
“Ha!” came the skeptical exclamation. “Why ever else?” she demanded. “What else were you ever good for but goading?”

  
The older woman smiled and sipped her wine, very pointedly not being insulted. “You can’t honestly tell me you are happy here. You, of all people. All the things you have seen and done.”

  
“Well. Then I won’t.” Nynaeve turned her back. Conversations with Moiraine always went like this, even after years of practice. She had a way of putting one’s hackles up and at the same time making one feel ridiculous for being skittish. “But it’s a damn sight better than that bog.”

  
“You would turn your back on the world.” It was not an accusation, but that did not stop it stinging like one.

  
“Yes!” Nynaeve snapped, setting down the pitcher a bit harder than she intended. “And I wish to the Creator it would turn its back on me.”  
Silence fell heavy once more, broken only by the sound of the fire and the clattering of cutlery. Moiraine sat at the bench and looked steadily upon the other woman. Nynaeve did not give her the satisfaction. She went about the washing up with her lips pressed tight. She did not avoid looking at the Blue sister; instead, she looked right through her.

  
“It is an exceptional predicament,” Moiraine spoke softly, almost to herself, “el’Nynaeve ti al’Meara Mandragoran, formerly of the Yellow Ajah, by all rights dowager queen of the Malkieri nation, pottering around a hut in the backwoods. Don’t you think, even for one moment, how wasteful it is? To hole yourself away here, to deprive Sisters and Accepted who could learn so much from you, your experience? It’s no better than if you were dead.”

  
Nynaeve was briefly proud of the steadiness of her voice as she reposted, “What if that isn’t rather the point?”

  
“I don’t think so. I think you’re being a mule headed, man-stupid, selfish old woman.” The claim was level and calmly stated, delivered with raised brows that demanded a response. Nynaeve did not pause to think it was a statement designed simply to get a rise out of her: it hit her like a hard, cold slap across the face and she reeled internally from it.

  
Water slopped as she slammed down the crock in her hands, and she couldn’t see for the mist clouding her eyes. “I have buried grandchildren, Moiraine! Great-grandchildren.” She hadn’t meant to shout but, all of a sudden, she was.

  
The Blue was on her feet, halving the distance between them, one hand propelling her to the edge of the table as her voice hardened and escalated in return. “You have chosen a path most Aes Sedai spurn for this very hardship, and you want my pity for it?”

  
“No!” The outcry was shrill; she let go the savage pressure she’d been exerting on her braid and ground both hands into her temples roughly, squeezing her eyes shut. “I don’t want your anything, can’t you see that? I just want to be left alone!”

  
Cool hands cupped her cheeks and Nynaeve opened her eyes to Moiraine’s own, scant inches above and less than a hand’s breadth away.  
“I did not come here to scold you.” Moiraine whispered.

  
Nynaeve might have demanded just what she had come for, then, but the hot, angry tears in her eyes overflowed their banks and came crashing down, singly and silently, to leave warm marks on the other woman’s fingers. Her throat was clenched tight by a merciless fist of emotion, and the look in the taller woman’s eyes brought her breath up short in her lungs, as Moiraine held her gaze with an expression so odd and compelling Nynaeve found herself rapt.

  
One shuffling step, and then two, then three, she was impelled backward, guided by the other woman, whose eyes never once left her own, until the backs of her knees hit the frame of the chest bed built in underneath the stairs and she fell back heavily, all her pent-up breath deserting her in a gust.

  
The mattress, stuffed with hay and heather, crackled as she was pressed back against it. Moiraine kept one hand cradled behind Nynaeve’s neck, gently lowering her head to the pillow; she hunkered down, weight supported on one elbow and the knee that found purchase between the other woman’s thighs. Watching her eyes all the while, carefully gauging, Moiraine dipped her face and with utmost care, laid her lips across those of the younger woman. Nynaeve felt their rosehip softness brush, testing the pliability of her mouth. They softly pressed, as if begging entrance; the delicate tip of tongue traced the slight part that clove them, the only tangible distance between the two of them. A shudder wrenched her from the strong, deep muscles at the backs of her thighs, to the thin sheets across her wing bones. The tenderness of the touch was too much to bear, and if she had had any inclination previously to resistance, it gave way like candleflame to a sharp exhale. Her jaw dropped slack, and Moiraine plunged deep in answer.

  
The kiss kindled a yearning within her, a deep pulling so long ignored that now, called by name, was almost painful. Pinned as they were, Nynaeve’s hips gave a spasmodic jerk. She closed her eyes and let everything drop away; all the long years of loneliness, the saturated stores of misplaced resentment and the cleverly disguised despair. It no longer mattered. For the first time in longer than she cared to recall, Nynaeve lost herself in the moment, and did not care about what came before or what would come after because none of that existed. There was only here, and now, and the warmth spreading through her veins like spring water, bubbling, bubbling up from deep places until it must burst forth, a boiling geyser. For a moment, for an hour, they kissed, exploring, becoming accustomed, Nynaeve learning all over again how it was to be kissed until at last all hesitation and timidity passed and she began to kiss back. When her hands began to feel, almost of their own accord, at the soft, warm body pressed against her, Moiraine’s mouth broke away by unspoken consent to caress the edge of the younger woman’s nose, her cheek, the lobe of her ear, the line of her jaw.

  
Fingers fumbled at knots and buttons, but whose fingers and whose clothes was impossible to say. Nynaeve had to concentrate on remembering both to fill her lungs and to empty them as Moiraine’s mouth picked out crescents of exquisite sensation along the curve of her throat. Starlight blurred through the leaded windowpane overhead dazzled her, the feel of breath and lips and tongue tracing the line of her collarbone left her dizzy and breathless. For half a heartbeat, Nynaeve felt a brief pang of shyness as the laces of her bodice and blouse came undone and were pushed away, and the cool air rushed over her breasts—plump enough in her youth, never more than moderate, but weighted and sagged by three rounds of milk and heavily baby-chewed. That seemed to make no never mind to the other woman, though, as she took them reverently in her hands, kissed their length with warm lips, took each firm dark nipple in her teeth by turn and teased them. When Nynaeve mustered the courage and the presence of mind to raise her own hands and push back the last of the blue lawn from Moiraine’s shoulders, she found the other woman’s breasts small and firm, the pale nipples stiff against her palms.

  
Not a word had been spoken, the only sounds their rushed and weighty breathing, overloud in the small space. Until, unable to endure the pressure in stoicism any longer, a muffled moan slipped from Nynaeve as the other woman gave suck to the nipple captured in her lips and sensation stabbed through her. Her breath beat like the wings of a bird trying to outrace a storm. When Moiraine’s slim fingers, cool and smooth, slid down her belly to the moistened thatch below, to slip between her lower lips into the warm dampness, she cried out in earnest, her limbs stiffening and curling inward reflexively at the gentle touch to the raw bundle of nerves nestled there. With patient skill, those fingers worked, Moiraine’s body over hers pinning her still, the mouth flitting about her breast and throat making it impossible to consciously draw breath though some air surely drove the wordless, instinctive cries that filled the alcove beneath the stairs. The knee planted firmly at the apex of her thighs served as anchor, providing support and belay to the unguarded bucking of her hips. Nynaeve could not spare the faculty to still her thrashing body, but it seemed to pose little difficulty to the other woman; she kept pace with her, mouth and fingers, pressed so close that even momentary separation was impossible. A shifting of weight allowed Moiraine to push the other’s legs further apart and with a thumb left to handle the nub of sensitivity, two fingers freed themselves to explore deeper, to stroke at the interior. A moan became an unbridled scream as the persistent stroking closed circuit, inside and out: heat and energy flooded into the deep muscles of her thighs and calves, the recesses of her abdomen, and somehow seeped all the way to her elbows, a brightness without light filling her to the brim, like enough saidar to grasp the Wheel and spin the universe asunder, enough saidar to burn her out a hundred times over.

 

 

The sky was softening towards morning, the diamond-cut blackness of deep night giving way, when Nynaeve finally felt as if she’d caught her breath. The chill air had slowly stolen all the moister from the sweat that slicked their bare limbs, leaving behind a sheen of crackling salt on skin stiffened with cold and immobility. Moraine’s soft curls had lost their elaborate style long ago, and lay in lazy coils across her shoulders and breasts, falling like a flung arm across her brow and hiding her eyes. Small breaths escaped her slightly parted lips to stir the fringe of her hair, and rustle the tiny hairs on Nynaeve’s stomach.

  
The fire on the hearth across the room was all but embers, now, and she sent a tendril of Air sneaking along the floor to worm its way into the ashes and stir the blaze back to life. The other woman stirred at last, feeling the glow of Nynaeve embracing siadar and following its flow without looking. She placed a kiss on Nynaeve’s ribs as she rolled upright at last, propped on one arm, an uncertain quirk to her lip as she looked down on the younger woman with an unfathomable expression in her eyes. It might have been akin to apprehension or embarrassment, but Nynaeve refused to be put off ease. Not now, in her own home; she was too warm, and too comfortable, and it was much too late at night to fuss about things now. She smiled a shy reassurance at the woman perched on the edge of her bed, and sat up herself, taking note of the pungent stickiness between her thighs. The heavy pewter tub against the far wall was almost too heavy to move by hand, but she reached out and wedged a cushion of Air beneath it to glide it out onto the kitchen floor next to the hearth. Her limbs were pleasantly heavy as she stood and stretched, reaching again with Air to unlatch the window above the washboard, and ropes of water from the well outside snaked in to coil themselves in the belly of the tub resting on the broad hearthstone.

  
“Showoff,” Moiraine huffed good naturedly as she reached out from the bed and began undoing Nynaeve’s tousled braid, unwinding the crimped strands and running her elfin fingers through their length to separate them. Nynaeve laughed softly in acknowledgement as she took the other woman’s hand and lead her across the floor, stealing the last warmth from the embers and transferring it into the water. Moiraine climbed daintily over the lip of the tub and eased into the warming water, and Nynaeve sat on her haunches at the hearth to stack more logs; she cheated and struck the spark with the Power, but in truth she felt nothing more than a paper-thin leather pouch filled to bursting with Power, and burning it off was a necessity, lest she burn up with it instead. When the low fire was cheery and would continue to was the side of the metal cauldron with its heat, she stood and slipped into the water as well. Hot baths were a luxury she had become accustomed to, and decided when retreating to the woods of her childhood for refuge in her old age, that they were something she would rather not live without, and the tub was easily deep and long enough for two, shaped for lounging more than facility. Moiraine had sunk so that only her eyes breached the waterline, two dark pools tracking her motions in enigmatic silence. Nynaeve sat with knees tucked to her chest, resting her back against the warm metal, and splashed water over her arms, unbothered just now by the scrutiny.

  
When her breath ran out, Moiraine leaned back her head to wet her mass of loose curls and surfaced, dripping, fingers scrubbing sweat from the roots. Firelight caught and danced in the droplets of water beading down her exposed breasts and erect nipples. Nynaeve watched the glow and the flickering shadows in the hollow of her eyes, the lee of her chin, the rise and valleys of her collarbone and shoulders. Moiraine raised her arms to wring water from her hair, lifting her breasts and bathing her side in the ruddy touch of the crackling fire. Feeling the throb of places still swollen beneath the water, Nynaeve leaned forward and reached out with arms streaming water to place her hands on the slim woman, cupping damp shoulders, brushing tangled hair back and tucking it behind small, round ears. She nipped an ear gently between her teeth on the way to burying her face in the other woman’s ivory throat, licking drops of water from the smooth skin. An arm went around the other woman’s shoulders to pull her close as Nyneave’s mouth travelled up the curve of her neck and jaw, and her hand encompassed a small breast as lips met lips. Nynaeve kissed her deeply, feeling muscles in back and shoulders ease as the other woman melted into her embrace; her hand left off its ministrations on Moiraine’s pliant breasts and traced a lazy line down her belly and into the water, determined to give as good as she got.

 

* * *

 

Morning mists curled protective arms around the trunks of silent trees, tinged golden along the pathway where the first rays of a rising sun stretched out. Two women wrapped in shawls stood at the garden gate, one hooded and robed in blue lingered just outside, her hand resting on the wicker barrier upon which the other leaned, swathed in patchwork wool that was more blanket than garment.

  
Moiraine gave a lopsided smile that was more submission than it was chagrin. “Perhaps I should break my promises more often,” she murmured, smiling at her host and looking back at the dark windowed cottage with not a little longing.

  
Nynaeve cocked her head in academic curiosity. “Why did you stay away?”

  
The small smile Moiraine turned her chin down to hide belied the subtle blush creeping across her cheeks. “…I couldn’t promise myself this wouldn’t happen, if I didn’t.” she admitted after a long moment of calculating silence.

  
Nynaeve’s bark of laughter startled a few grouse taking refuge in the hedge to wing, and they flapped away in indignation. Moiraine’s smile widened and she bowed her head to hide her amusement as she turned away and began down the path at a measured pace.

  
“Well.” Nynaeve called. “Perhaps they’ll send you back again, if they think you can win me over.”

  
The receding figure raised a hand in acknowledgement of the invitation, but did not break stride. Chuckling quietly to herself, Nynaeve retreated back into the house to put on a pot of tea and convince herself she deserved one day of lazing about.


End file.
